by Anne Gracie
And if no infection came afterward. Infection was usually the killer, not the wound itself.
He yanked off his coat and waistcoat and ripped off his neckcloth and shirt. He bared her shoulder, folded his shirt into a thick pad and tied it on with his neckcloth.
He looked around. The groom, Kirk, stood holding the reins of Cal’s and his own horse. Cal waved him closer. “I’m going to take Lady Ashendon up with me.”
“Wouldn’t a carriage—” Rose began.
“No time.” Cal mounted his horse. “Lift her up to me, Kirk. Gently.” He held out his arms.
Kirk bent and carefully scooped Emm up, then placed her in Cal’s arms. She was as pale as paper. Cal’s heart thudded painfully in his chest. She wasn’t dead, and she wasn’t going to be, not if he had any say in the matter. Not until next century. Or longer.
“Rose, George, you two ride ahead and let Burton know what’s happened. Tell him to fetch a doctor—one who understands bullet wounds.”
The girls galloped off.
“Lily, I want you to walk your horse beside me and help me. If she needs anything, if my horse stumbles . . . my hands are full.”
“I’ll do whatever is needed, Cal, don’t worry.”
“And, Kirk—”
“I’ll stay with this fellow’s body, m’lord,” Kirk said. “Off ye go.”
Lily took his horse’s reins and led them toward the park exit. A part of Cal wished they could ride ventre a terre and get to a doctor as soon as possible, but of course they had to walk so as not to jolt Emm’s wound any more than necessary. He cradled her against his bare chest. Her stillness, her pallor frightened him.
He told himself she would recover. A shoulder wound wasn’t so bad. He’d had two himself.
But this was Emm. His wife. The convenient wife he was now sure he couldn’t live without. Or wouldn’t want to.
I love you, Cal. The first time she’d ever said it.
Why? Because she thought she was dying?
Joe Gimble had asked Cal to tell his wife he loved her. Was that what people said when they thought they were dying?
He gazed down at the face of his pale, frighteningly still wife. Maybe it took death, or the threat of death, to jolt people into the realization that they loved.
Because in that moment when he’d ripped open her coat and saw her awash in her own blood, it had struck him like a thunderbolt: that he loved her, loved this dear, precious woman with every part of his body and soul.
And that he’d never told her.
He bent and put his mouth to her ear. “I love you, Emm,” he said. “Do you hear me? I love you. You’re going to be all right—and I love you.”
Lily looked over and said gently, “She knows you do, Cal.”
“How?” he said, anguished. “How could she know? I’ve never told her, Lil, never once.” He hadn’t even realized he did—let alone how much—until now.
His little sister smiled. “We know you love Emm, Cal. And if we do, she must. And when she wakes up, you can tell her.”
Oh, God, he hoped so.
* * *
“Did I happen to mention that I love you?”
Emm, propped up against her pillows in bed, smiled. “Only about a dozen times. And that was just this morning. I think it was more like fifty yesterday.”
Cal bent and kissed her gently. “Just so you remember.”
It was three days since she’d been wounded. There was no sign of fever or infection; she was making a good recovery. The doctor who’d attended her was physician and surgeon both—a rare combination—and had attended troops in the war. He’d extracted the bullet skillfully and had given Emm laudanum for the pain and some powders for the fever that usually followed bullet wounds.
He’d also given the nod to Cal’s sisters’ suggestions of willow bark tea, reputed to be good for counteracting fever. Apparently they’d picked up a smattering of sickroom remedies from conversations in the Pump Room.
“Would you mind if I left you now? I have some business to attend to.”
She nodded sleepily. “I’m ridiculously tired. I think I’ll have a nap.” She grimaced. “Another one.”
* * *
Cal went first to Whitehall.
“So, you meant it about resigning your commission,” Radcliffe said.
“I did.” Cal handed him the signed papers.
“Because you have a family to care for now. How’s your wife, by the way?”
“Recovering well, thank you.”
Cal blamed himself for her injury. If he hadn’t come hunting for the assassin in the first place . . . He’d never have met and married her.
He just wished she and the girls hadn’t been there when Gimble shot at him.
But if they hadn’t, Cal would probably be dead.
“Have the Gimble family been released?”
Radcliffe nodded. “A few hours ago.”
“Not yesterday? Or the day Gimble was killed?”
Radcliffe shrugged. “There were things to follow up. The funeral to arrange.”
“I’ll pay for it.”
Radcliffe looked up in surprise. “The funeral?”
Cal nodded. “They don’t have much. They’ll need every penny they have to get to America.” He hadn’t told Radcliffe about the money Gimble had on him. Radcliffe would want to confiscate it. “I’m going to pay their fares to America too.”
“Good lord. What’s gotten into you? Founding an assassin’s benevolent society?”
“Just balancing the score. The wife and children weren’t responsible for what he did.”
Radcliffe gave him a shrewd look. “You’re not feeling guilty, are you? Because guilt is pointless for the likes of us.”
Cal didn’t agree. “I think the ‘likes of us’ haven’t been doing as good a job as we should. That’s partly why I’ve resigned my commission. Europe is one thing, but there are things to be done in England, a future to be forged.”
“Very laudable.”
Cal didn’t bother trying to explain the deep disillusion he’d felt, seeing what had become of England’s former soldiers. For so long he’d hated Gimble, hated him with a righteous passion, but as his enemy lay dying, Cal saw that he was just a man like any other, who loved his wife and children and worried about their future.
A murderer, but not wholly evil. And perhaps it wasn’t entirely Gimble’s fault.
This country had taken men like Bert and Joe Gimble—and the others Cal had met—taught them to shoot and to kill, and then, when the war was over, tossed them back to their former lives—into a country in dire economic turmoil—without care whether they starved or not.
Could he really blame Gimble for using the only skill he had to try to earn enough money to give his family a fresh start in a young country?
But Radcliffe would never see it like that.
“They’ll be at the aunt’s house, then?”
Radcliffe nodded, occupied with his paperwork again. Cal saw himself out.
* * *
The Gimble family received Cal’s visit with suspicion, if not outright hostility. He couldn’t blame them.
The woman who answered the door wouldn’t open it more than a crack until he said, “I was with Joe when he died—I didn’t kill him. He fell from a tree and broke his neck—but I was there, and before he died he gave me a message for his wife and children. Would that be you?”
Grudgingly she opened the door and gestured for him to come in. Her eyes were red with weeping. The three children gathered around her, the little ones clutching her skirt. The young boy stood stiffly apart, his eyes full of grief and anger.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said to Joe’s widow, though in all honesty he couldn’t be sorry Joe Gimble was dead. “Joe died quickly and in no pain.” He didn’t know i
f the latter was true, but he was comforting the living.
“I have made arrangements to pay for Joe’s funeral. He won’t be going in a pauper’s grave.”
“Why?” Mrs. Gimble said bitterly. “Feeling guilty?”
“Not guilty, but partly responsible. What was between Joe and me was nothing to do with his family, and I’m sorry you were imprisoned. I had no part of that.”
She eyed him skeptically a moment, then gave a reluctant nod. “You said Joe had a message for us.”
Cal pulled out the roll of notes, to which he’d added tickets for a passage to America for two women and three children. Not steerage, either. “He gave me this to give to you.”
She stared at the roll of money, likely more than she’d seen in her life. She gave him a disbelieving look. Cal nodded, and she reached out a trembling hand and took the money, clutching it to her chest as if frightened he’d snatch it back.
“Tickets to America are in there, for you, your sister and the children.”
She nodded, her mouth working.
“Joe’s last words were to tell you he loved you.”
Her face crumpled, her eyes flooded with tears. She gave a loud sob and fled the room.
Cal looked down at the boy. “I watched you, the day they took you all away to prison. The way a person behaves in a crisis is very revealing of character.”
The boy watched him from narrowed, suspicious eyes.
“You took care of the little ones, and you helped your mother and aunt.”
“Gotta,” the boy muttered. “I gotta be the man of the family when Da’s away.” His face struggled as he remembered his father was never coming back.
“Your father said he was very proud of you.” The boy turned away abruptly, his hands over his eyes.
“You’re a son any man would be proud of,” Cal said, and quietly let himself out.
* * *
He told Emm about it that night. She lay snuggled against his chest.
She wept a few tears when he told her about Mrs. Gimble and the money. And about what he’d said to the young boy. “You’re a good man, Calbourne Rutherford. No wonder I love you so much.” They kissed then, but softly, because her shoulder was still painful and he didn’t want to jar her.
He ached to be able to make love to her again, this time in the full knowledge that he loved her, and that she loved him. The glow in her eyes told him she felt the same.
“So you’re not going back to Europe?”
“No. I’ve resigned my commission.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Become the Earl of Ashendon.”
“You already are the Earl of Ashendon.”
He shook his head. “In name only, I’m afraid. There’s a lot more work to be done. Speaking of which, I have to go out of town for a few days. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, of course not, I’m stuck in this bed until Dr. Duncan says I can get up.”
Bed rest? For a shoulder injury? When Cal was shot in the shoulder he’d been back at work the minute the fever had passed. But probably women were more delicate than men.
“Where are you going?”
He rose from the bed and stirred up the coals in the fire. It didn’t need tending, but he couldn’t lie to her face. “To the country. Just some estate business. I hope to be back in a few days.”
* * *
The village of Bucklebury was quiet and pretty. At the local inn Cal asked directions to the home of Sir Humphrey Westwood and was soon bowling up the driveway of Westwood House—a rather grander place than Emm had led him to believe.
He presented his card at the door. The elderly butler took it with a sorrowful air. “Sir Humphrey rarely receives visitors these days, my lord.”
“I think he’ll want to see me,” Cal said. “I’m his son-in-law.”
The butler’s eyes widened, then his face lit up. “You have news of Miss Emm?”
“She’s Lady Ashendon now,” Cal said proudly.
The butler’s hopeful gaze shifted to the traveling carriage. “She’s not—”
“No, but I’m hoping to bring Sir Humphrey to her. In London.”
The butler’s eyes filled with tears. “He hasn’t been off the estate since he came home nearly seven years ago, after combing the country for weeks, looking for signs of her. Brokenhearted, he was, to come home alone.”
Cal’s sympathy was limited. The man should have had more faith in his daughter in the first place. But he wasn’t here to rake over old coals but to heal old wounds. “Take me to Sir Humphrey.”
Chapter Twenty-three
The voice of conscience is so delicate that it is easy to stifle it; but it is also so clear that it is impossible to mistake it.
—MADAME DE STAËL, GERMANY
Emm was upstairs getting dressed when Cal arrived home four days later. Burton told him the doctor had just left. He’d given her permission to be out of bed and moving around again.
When she saw him she ran toward him, flung her arms around him and then winced. “Forgot my stupid shoulder. Kiss me, Cal darling. I know it’s only been a few days but you wouldn’t believe how much I’ve missed you.”
He proceeded to demonstrate that he had, in fact, missed her much more. She drew him toward the bed, saying, “The doctor said it’s all right.”
Cal abruptly recalled himself. He drew back. “Not yet. I forgot to tell you, you have a visitor downstairs who’s very eager to see you.”
She sighed. “People have been very kind; you have no idea how many callers and flowers and succession-house fruits I’ve received. I didn’t even know I knew so many people. In fact, I don’t. I think it’s mostly because shortly after I weathered a horrid scandal, I was shot by a notorious assassin and thus I have become something of a celebrity. It’s all a bit overwhelming. Let us hope people soon find something else to fuss over.”
She paused and said mischievously, “Do I really want to see this visitor? I could still be confined to bed, you know.”
It was tempting, but this couldn’t wait. Besides, when he finally took his wife to bed, he wouldn’t want to leave it for a week. He offered his arm. “You do want to see him, and he very much wants to see you. Come, my lady, I’ll escort you downstairs.”
“Oh, very well, if I must.” She took his arm.
She was still holding Cal’s arm when he signaled for Logan to open the sitting room door, and Cal was glad of it, because when she saw the stiff, pale-faced gentleman who rose nervously to greet her, she stumbled and almost fainted again.
“Papa?” she whispered. “Papa, is it really you? But I thought— Oh, Papa!” And she ran across the room and flung herself weeping into her father’s arms.
An evening followed then of tears, apologies, explanations and forgiveness. Sir Humphrey was so obviously grieved at the breach with his daughter, blamed himself so savagely by being taken in, was so remorseful at not having more faith in his daughter, and so very apologetic, that even Cal forgave him.
Emm, of course, had forgiven him long ago.
Just one thing now puzzled her. “Papa, when you were searching for me, why did you never think to look for me in Bath? Did it never occur to you I would seek refuge with Miss Mallard?”
He shook his head. “Why would it? You hated that place. You wrote me long letters every week begging, pleading, imploring me to rescue you from that dreadful place and bring you home—and don’t shake your head at me, Emm. I still have every one of your letters, a large stack.” He indicated how large with his hands. “Yes, of course I kept them. I’ve read them over and over, since you left. They were all I had left of you.”
His voice broke and, when he had mastered himself, he added almost to himself, “You hated that place.”
“Yes, when I was first sent there I did,” she agreed gently. “But I was
thirteen then. And after a while I got used to it.”
“I didn’t know. You never said, not in any of your letters.”
“I suppose I didn’t.” She gave him a tremulous smile. “But we’ve found each other now.”
He took her hands in his. “Yes, we’ve found each other now.”
When the girls came home from their outing, they were amazed to discover they had a new relative. Dinner lasted a long time, with reminiscences—happier ones now—and plans for the future.
When Emm escorted her father up to the best guest bedroom—for of course her dear papa was not allowed to stay in some horrid hotel or club when his home was here, with his family—he was a man who looked ten years younger than the man Cal had first met a bare handful of days before.
And Emm? Emm just glowed with happiness.
* * *
A few weeks later, Cal received a note from Gil Radcliffe.
Dear Ashendon,
Took the liberty of inquiring into the situation of that Irwin fellow. It might gratify you to know his situation is far from happy. The widow he married is a harridan of the first degree, a grim-faced harpy with the disposition of a peevish rat. She was, and is, immensely rich, but the fool didn’t make any further inquiries before he married her. He got nothing—it was all tied up in trusts. She holds the purse strings, he has to ask her for every penny and she keeps him on a very tight rein.
I’m told he’s about as miserable as a man can be. She’s as healthy as a cow, and no doubt he would dream of killing her, except that she’s made it known far and wide that he gets nothing in her will.
I don’t know what Irwin was like when your wife knew him, but these days he’s a miserable whipped dog of a man.
Of course if you still wish to track him down and give him the thrashing he deserves, you could, but I hardly think it’s necessary. It might actually gain him some sympathy.
Revenge might be a dish best eaten cold, but sometimes it’s just not practical.
